I was at the river the other day and saw fish rising everywhere. They were mostly rock bass and sunfish, maybe a few crappie and other species mixed in. They were eating some sort of fly and would not hit anything I threw at them. Rock bass and sunnies will generally hit anything you put in front of them, but these fish were completely ignoring my offerings. I've never seen them being so selective. How embarrassing!

They were rising all over in water from 6 inches to about 4ft deep. There was one current seam that held a large concentration of fish. It was at the edge of the deep spot right near where I was fishing, and I could stand there and watch the fish picking the flies off the surface. I did catch a few fish in other parts of the river where the hatch wasn't as heavy.

Interesting...I only ask because I wondered if there was any spawning activity in with the feeding. Sometimes these species will show short binges of feeding followed by prolonged abstinence (from food that is ).

Originally posted by John Desjardins Curious experience. Presentation problems maybe?

Definitely! I didn't have any dry flies that were the right size and color, and I'm sure I wasn't getting a natural drift or action. Usually that doesn't really matter with rock bass and sunfish. I was just surprised that they were so fussy since I've never had that happen before.

i have seen this situation year after year on one of my favortie streams....and from my experience, i must concur with Mark....panfish, bluegill and rockies in particular, will spawn in the smaller streams before anythign else does, ( at least here in KY). the spawn beds become frenzied with indiscriminate predation just befroe the actual spawn. Cold fronts will shut them down like a switch being thrown, but as soon as the weather breaks, they are at it again, then nothing...nothing for about a week, the feeding starts again..a friend of mine who is a state biologist said that the binges the fish go on are usually short lived and are to help the fish continue the spawn process or to recupe from a mid spawn that was adversely affected by major weather patterns, flooding, or other envrionmental impacts..he says theses changes may be so sublte that we don't notice, but the fish do...so the logic he offers is that the fish were refueling for something and that they had honed in on a readily supply of food and become tunnelled vision and only feed on what is abundant to quickly fuel up and get back to business of procreating...just an idea, hell, maybe they were just picky that day!!